How are Hivers doing with the length of their posts? Is posts length increased or decreased? What is the average length of a post on Hive? How many words in a post are enough? Are longer post rewarded more on Hive?
Let’s take a look at the data for post length and payouts based on this.
Here we will be looking at the number of characters and words per post, what is the average and how does the daily numbers fluctuate. Then we will be taking a look at the payouts for the posts according to their length and categorize them.
The period that is analyzed here is 2020-2024.
Total Number of Posts
First an overall look at the number of posts per day in the period. These are post only, comments not included. Here is the chart.
The number of posts per day has increased towards 2022, reaching 5k at ATH, and then in the following years to around 2.3k where it is now.
Total Number of Characters in Posts
Here is a chart for the daily number of characters from posts.
The blockchain has a data of body length, or number of characters per post. When we sum those up, on a daily level we get the above. This chart follows the post chart trend. The numbers of characters per day is between 8M to 12M per day.
The number of characters by itself doesn’t tell us much.
Number of Words per Post
Here is the chart.
From here we can notice that the number of words per posts has been steadily increasing in the period. It has started to around 500 words per posts on average in 2020, and grew towards 800 words per posts in 2023. In 2024 we have seen a small drop and somewhat stabilization around the 800 words per posts.
There is a spike towards the end of October 2024, that has been short lived, some type of anomaly and probably some botting.
It’s quite amazing to see that the average length of posts has been growing trough the years.
As mentioned above, the blockchain only has data for number of characters per post, not a word count. I have converted the numbers of characters in words based on an average of 5 characters per word. Its not a 100% exact number but close enough.
Note that videos are usually short on characters, that doesn’t represent their length.
Posts Length and Payouts
If we categorize the number of posts according to their word count, we get this chart. This is data for November 2024.
We can see here that the shortest post with 500 or less are on the top. As the post length increases, the number of posts is getting smaller. But interesting that the last category, more than 2500 words has more post than the previous one 2k to 2.5k words in a post.
What About the Payouts?
Are longer posts getting rewarder more than short posts?
Here is the chart for payouts according to posts word count in the last 30 days.
We can se quite a even position when it comes to payouts for the top three categories. Posts above 1500 words are on average getting $10 or slightly more. Then comes the posts between 1k to 1.5k words with just below $10.
The short posts, under 500 words have the smallest average payouts with $2 per post.
The table looks like this.
| Words per post | Average earning [$] |
|---|---|
| < 500 | 2.06 |
| 500-1000 | 5.17 |
| 2500 + | 6.64 |
| 1000-1500 | 7.72 |
| 1500-2000 | 8.47 |
| 2000-2500 | 9.91 |
The posts under 500 words on average earn $2 and the posts in the range 2k to 2.5k earn on average $10.
Longer post obviously earn more.
But as we can see the post from 1k to 1.5k words are very close in the earning to the longer posts and they are the most efficient in terms of earnings per word.
Who is Making the Longest Posts?
Here is the chart for authors who are making the longer posts from the start of 2024.
The @swc-curation account is on the top here with a post with 16k words. It’s a reporting account that is dual lingual so it puts in a lot of characters.
@hivewatchers is on the second spot with a 12k words per post. @cuarangel on the third spot with a compilation post from the curated post. Some other reporting accounts in the top as well.
All the best
@dalz
Interesting stuff!
Yeah seeing stats on words per post is insightful.
Thanks @dalz
Thanks!
Shorters posts may not be earning enough, but their participation rate is high, and there are so many contests where the min requirement is 150 words, that is why many people partake with the hope that they can get a nominal vote like $1 or $2. So you may not see huge reward in such posts, but definitely you can see more number of posts in this bracket. That is why they feature in the top.
Anyway, interesting stat.
Thank you.
I wonder if the dual-language posts account for most of the long posts. I've seen a lot of German-English, Spanish-English and Portuguese-English posts which are obviously double the length they'd be if they were in just one language.
Interesting! Always write my post within 500- 1500 words.
Very interesting analysis. Needed to reblog it. 😍 Like those charts and graphics you made, everything is so clear and understandable.
Tnx!
Thank you - interesting data ! I wonder if the increase in the number of words per post is being influenced by the increasing number of posts which may be AI-generated that are appearing ?
Cant really tell ... my guess is as prices goes down, only the ones that post longer posts stay... might see increase in shorter post when prices goes up
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@danzocal(7/10) tipped @dalz
Interesting. Thank you for sharing this to us. I have no idea with this and with your post I have idea now.